JUST this June, several heart-wrenching tales involving left-behind children have bombarded news headlines: Four children from the same family in Bijie City, Guizhou Province, committed suicide, an 11-year-old girl in Anqing City, Anhui Province, took her own life by drinking pesticide and a 13-years-old girl in Sichuan’s Nanchong City was violently mistreated.

These children had one thing in common: lack of parental care. These children were nearly discarded and had no hope. These cases and many more like them should be a wake-up call that as a country with over 60 million left-behind children — whose parents live and work in another city — China should weave a safety net for them and create a healthy environment for their growth.

According to a recent report by the All-China Women’s Federation, left-behind children are vulnerable to crime, molestation and psychological problems. The parents who leave their children behind often leave them in the care of others and only see them once a year, for Spring Festival, if they are lucky.

As a previously left-behind child, I know how depressed those four children in Bijie must have been when their mother left them over a year before. In a suicide note written by the eldest of the four kids, he said, “Thanks to our parents’ good intention of making money to raise us, I think I have to go because I swore not to live beyond 15 years old and death has been my dream for years.” Obviously, the children’s lack of love and care killed them.

I was lucky enough to have responsible and caring parents who always called me and wrote me letters while I was studying at a junior high boarding school. When holidays came, they would pick me up and take me to live with them. Although I was somewhat left behind, I never felt too far away from them psychologically, and their intangible care helped me cope with the separation. However, I was one of the lucky ones. According to a report, over 2.5 million left-behind children are living alone, without even their grandparents to care for them.

An old Chinese proverb says, “If a child is uneducated, his parents are to blame.” To prevent left-behind children from feeling discarded, parents must be held responsible. As a child’s lawful custodian, parents must provide for their children materially and emotionally. A parent’s emotional support cannot be substituted by someone else’s.

Most left-behind children are between 1 and 8 years old. These little children are still in the process of developing their bodies and minds and need more parental guidance. However, the cruel reality is that while their urban peers are spoiled by their parents, these rural children have to shoulder unimaginable stress.

Supporting left-behind children should also induce societal concern and assistance. Even though some local governments have established institutes like Home for Left-behind Children and some have hired “caring mothers” to look after abandoned children, these efforts are far from enough.

To address the above-mentioned problems, we should improve related laws and innovate ways of helping these children and their families. For example, laws should be issued stipulating a minimum number of hours that parents should spend with their children in a year and punish those who severely shirk their responsibilities as custodians. Also, the government should consider engaging with professional NGOs that have expertise in offering psychological support and counseling and designate special staff to look after the children.

Left-behind children make up one-third of China’s children, and their healthy growth affects the future of our nation. Creating a safe environment for them is not only a family thing, but also a societal one. I am looking forward to seeing the introduction of effective policies to weave a real safety net for these children.

(The author is an editor with the News Desk at China Radio International.)